Nairobi

10 DAYS KENYA CAMPING SAFARI

Day 1 – Mt. Kenya

Leave Nairobi in the morning and head towards the slopes of Africa's second largest mountain at 5199m - Mt Kenya. After lunch we will then go for the afternoon game drive at Sweetwater’s game ranch to see the wildlife including rehabilitated chimpanzees. Dinner and overnight at Mountain Rock Campsite.

Mount Kenya was shaped by volcanic action associated with the creation of the Rift Valley and is thought to be older than Mount Kilimanjaro; geologists believe it previously stretched at least 1500m above its at this moment in time height of 5199m (17,057ft).

The private ranch at Sweetwater’s is the only sanctuary for rehabilitation in Kenya of these widely harmed chimpanzees with two groups living in an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible. This site is also a fanatical black rhino breeding area.

Day 2 – Samburu

Drive in the morning for Samburu game reserve to reach there in time for the afternoon game drive in the park. Accommodation in our semi-permanent campsite beautifully set under a canopy of trees or pitch tents on the edge of Uaso Nyiro River. Cold showers are available which are marvelously refreshing in the hot /dusty climates.

Samburu is part of a lava plain that includes a varied landscape of broken volcanic rock, red dirt, dried river beds, steep hills, thorn scrub and rocky outcroppings.  Some large enough to be called mesas. This reserve is becoming one of Kenya's most trendy stops after the Mara.

This area is home to the infrequent Grevy’s zebra with huge fury ears, Somali ostriches with distinct blue legs, gerenuk antelope standing on hind legs to feed and the shy Oryx. Elephant and crocodile are cast iron sightings and brilliant bird watching is available here with numerous varieties of weaverbirds and the martial eagle to be seen. Leopard sighting will also not be missed if you are lucky.

Day 3 – Marsabit

At times you will wake up to the sounds of splashing elephant in the river as we head north again along the Trans-African highway to Marsabit. Marsabit (meaning place of cold) is a surprisingly cool, green and hilly oasis rising high above the dry heat of the adjacent desert lands.

The local Rendille people in their bright red outfits, beads and earrings make it a vivacious place. After putting up a camp, we will then visit the lodge inside the National park and so long as the roads are dry we drive to Lake Paradise and Little Lake an indigenous forest and a desert that come together to create the most gripping landscape on earth. Elephants and greater kudu abound. The dense forest in the park is also inhabits a variety of birds.

Day 4 – Kalacha

You will then visit Marsabit town and another volcanic crater before making our way back into the desert and lava flows. We camp at Kalacha, a small Gabbra settlement on the edge of the Chalbi Desert.

The Gabbra are an Eastern Cushite people related to the Somali-Rendille in their historical origins in the southern Ethiopian highlands about AD 1000. They are pastoralists, particularly attached to their camels.

Day 5 - Lake Turkana

We will leave earlier, crossing the Chalbi Desert. Lake Turkana is the largest desert lake in the world and extends for 288 kilometres up to the Ethiopian / Kenyan border and is delimited by volcanic rock and desert. We will then reach at our semi - permanent beach village where we have our traditional Turkana Huts if still available and if not we pitch tent at an alternative campsite which make it a perfect place to relax, protected from the blazing sun and heat characteristic of the climate of this remote area.

Day 6 – Lake Turkana

This day will be spent relaxion and you may visit the local lodge to swim or hire a boat to visit the neighboring area (at an extra cost).

In toting up, we may visit Loiyangalani and the community settled there while in the evening visiting one of the Turkana Manyattas [optional] for traditional dances at an extra cost if clients wish. An memorable experience under a star studded sky so close you can almost touch it.

Turkana, formerly L. Rudolf is now named after one of the tribes who live on its shores and it is in this area that Richard Leakey revealed the three million year old fossils of ‘Homo Erectus.’ This pre historic site is now known as the “Cradle of Mankind”. The Lake is also known as the “Jade Sea” because of its remarkable blue – green colour. This is a result of algae particles, which shift with changes of the wind and light, so that the water surface shifts from blue to grey to fabulous jade. The lake is home to the prime population of Nile crocodiles in the world.

Day 7: Tuum camel safari

Leaving  Lake Turkana via the very rocky road out of the Rift Valley we head south to Tuum, situated on the west of Mt. Nyiro which stands to the East of the Suguta Valley. This is a very attractive but rough drive through lava flows to the broken sands on the edge of the Kaisut desert. After a picnic lunch, you get a chance to walk with camels and Samburu guides in these breath-taking landscapes for a few hours to the foothills of Mt. Nyiro where you set camp together with the guides and camels.

The Suguta valley is a huge sector of the Rift Valley between Lake Baringo and Lake Turkana. At the north end, the valley floor is only a few hundred metres above sea level, preceding making it one of the lowest parts of the Rift Valley structure. It is one of the preceding parts of Kenya with deserts, volcanic cones, salt lakes and uneven lava fields.

Mt. Nyiro is enclosed by desert but its upper slopes are covered in forest and small springs surface lower down to nourish the villages of Tuum and South Horr and numerous other small settlements in the foothills. From the top of Mt. Nyiro to the bottom of the Suguta, the land drops over 2500m in less than 20km. This district is sliced through by bottomless ravines, called luggas; which are habitually dry but become soaked with sudden flash floods after rain.

Day 8 –Maralal

After early morning breakfast we will have an morning walk in the cool and brilliant African sunrise for a couple of hours after which we proceed to Maralal where we spend the night. Maralal is the illegal capital of the Samburu people and has a distinctly frontier feel about it.

Near Maralal is one of the most breath taking scenes in all of Kenya – the Losiolo escarpment, an endless stretch as land drops down to the Suguta valley. Maralal is also home of the Maralal International Camel Derby that happens once a year between July and October and attracts riders and audience from the four corners of the world

Day 9 – Lake Baringo

We will depart for the south and we visit Lake Baringo where we spend the night at a campsite sleeping amongst the grazing hippos. L. Baringo is the most Northerly of Kenya’s small Rift Valley lakes; crumpled with papyrus and well developed acacia forest. Crocodiles, Hippos and monitor lizards are naturally seen from the shore.

Similarly, this is Kenya's bird watching centre with over 1200 different species native to the country and more than 450 sighted here and is thus a bird watcher's haven but beware as this is malaria land.

Day 10 – Nairobi

After breakfast we go on an early morning boat ride in search of crocodile, hippo and fish eagle. Drive back to Nairobi arriving in the late afternoon. You can either spend a night in your hotel room or proceed for airport transfers if not tired.